Taliban forbids women from entering well-known national park

In Bamiyan province, the Taliban government has stated that women are prohibited from visiting Band-e-Amir national park.

The acting minister of virtue and vice in Afghanistan, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, said that women were not wearing hijab in the park.

He asked religious leaders and security agencies to not let women in until they found a solution.

Band-e-Amir is a famous place for tourists and it became Afghanistan‘s first national park in 2009.

Many families like to go to this place, but because women are not allowed to go there, many people will not be able to enjoy the park.

Unesco says that the park is a group of lakes that were made by nature, and they have special shapes and structures. The park is also very beautiful and unlike anything else.

However, Mr Hanafi stated that visiting the park to look around was not something that had to be done. This information was reported by Afghan agency Tolo News.

Religious leaders in Bamiyan said that the women who were not following the rules while visiting the park were just tourists.

People are complaining that some people are not wearing hijab properly or not wearing it at all. These people are not from Bamiyan. “They come to this place from different areas,” said Sayed Nasrullah Waezi, who leads the Bamiyan Shia Ulema Council, in an interview with Tolo news.

Mariam Solaimankhil, a former MP from Afghanistan, posted a poem on Twitter. She talked about the ban and said she is confident that things will get better and they will be able to return.

Fereshta Abbasi from Human Rights Watch mentioned that on Women’s Equality Day, women were not allowed to go to the park. She stated that this action was a complete lack of respect towards the women in Afghanistan.
Richard Bennett, who is in charge of documenting human rights issues in Afghanistan for the UN, is wondering why women are not allowed to go to Band-e-Amir. He wants to know if this restriction is really necessary based on Islamic law and Afghan customs.

The Taliban have a habit of stopping women from doing certain things, like going to school, for a limited time. One example is when they stopped women from attending schools in December 2022.

The recent ban on visiting Band-E-Amir national park is part of a series of things that women have not been allowed to do since the Taliban took control again in August 2021.

Recently, the Taliban told hair and beauty salons in Afghanistan to close down. In the middle of July, they also stopped women from taking the important exams to get into university.